Found this blog article that does a great job of explaining the build/measure/learn loop and why the minimum viable product (“MVP”) is so important. It goes into a good amount of detail concerning why it is so important to have an MVP, “If your MVP fails to resonate with [your customers], they don’t turn into testers and patiently deliver you feedback on how to improve your product…they simply leave- a lot like your low retention users. You are then left guessing why things aren’t working which kicks off the search for the mythical killer feature- the one that always feels like it’s just around the corner.” The article went on to describe how to develop the MVP in the first place, which, as we talked about in class, begins by focusing on issues in society, before thinking about solutions. In sum, reading this was a nice way to recap the concepts that we learned about in the beginning of the course.

I saw this first on twitter….

A medical marijuana dispensary company, Med Men, is extending its roots to New York City. It is one of three dispensaries that has moved into the Big Apple. But it is more of a statement than anything, because marijuana has not been legalized in New York–yet.

Currently, there are only 51,000 certified for medical marijuana in New York City. That is not necessarily enough to sustain the large commercial space. But the target audience is not for those using marijuana for medical purposes. The move to NYC is seen as proactive to enhance visibility of the company for non-medical marijuana users.

I think this is a great move, and the medical marijuana users are the test market to see if they beat out their competition in New York.

I know that one of the groups mentioned hiring ex-offenders as employees for their solar initiative, and this article agrees with the strategy. Eurest, a food-service and hospitality firm in Chicago is working with a nonprofit in order to begin a culinary-skills training program for their new employees, who all will have had a criminal conviction in their past. The article notes that this move was not merely for philanthropic reasons, “With the U.S. unemployment rate at 4.1 percent and 6 million jobs unfilled nationwide, hiring people with criminal records, even those who have served jail or prison sentences, has moved from corporate kindness to corporate necessity.” Hopefully, tapping this new source of employees can continue to fuel economic growth in our country.

I was particularly intrigued by the fact that Eurest will be hiring citizens with past jail time. I believe this is a smart call, as some jail sentences could be the results of strict sentencing guidelines, and may not always correspond with the severity of the crime committed.

Tim Boyle, the CEO of Columbia, has provided the funding for an innovative homeless shelter in Portland. Unfortunately, the homeless shelter was not built to simply help the homeless in Portland. It was created when employees expressed concern about the safety of both employees and customers being harassed by homeless people at the downtown store location. It’s intended to attract more Columbia employees to work at the Portland location.

EDIT: It’s probably not genuine, and just feeds into the corporate mentality. But it does have a great outcome!

 

This article talks about the recent discovery of a plastic eating enzyme that could revolutionize recycling. I’m interested to see how this will used in the commercial context!

 

Building off of our presentation this past week, this article takes a broader view by looking at how police departments around the world are using drones.  It is interesting to see that multiple nations are in agreement that at least some form of drone use can be beneficial to law enforcement, but obviously different nations will disagree on the boundaries of use.  The article linked about discusses how police in England have started to use drones to monitor soccer games and identify troublemakers.  The article also discusses how Australian police are looking to fund a large drone project that would include 100 drones and 60 new drone operators.  These examples seem to show that law enforcement drone use will be something we have in the future, and the big debate will then be on the limitations lawmakers put in place.

In the ongoing conversation about regulation of the tech industry, Barron’s has a wonderful article about the differences between revenue models used by companies such as Apple and Facebook. These differences, the article suggests, have tremendous impacts on data collection and ensuing regulations.

I came across an article that talked about the top 4 reasons why start-ups fail. The four are: inadequate testing, incompatibility of team members, lack of persistence, and a catch-all category—everything else (which includes greed and lack of proper tools).

The article reminded me of our discussion on Saravathy—where we talked about how the effectual model is more closely associated with start-ups and that failures are baked into start-ups—and our discussions on the limitations on innovation. Even with the information from this article, it seems like start-ups will continue to struggle (especially since these 4 reasons are hard to “bake in”).

This article draws an interesting connection between the talk we heard two weeks ago from the “solar group” and the need for major companies to listen to customers reports about how they allocated resources and choose initiatives. The article points to a survey done by Unilever which polled 20,000 people to figure out how much sustainability played into the decision making process for buyers. “33 percent said that given the option, they would choose to buy from brands that are focused on sustainability.” Apple’s recent announcement that it now runs all of its facilities, worldwide, off clean energy should not only help the environment, but also its bottom line as it positions itself as the “clean” tech company. It doesn’t hurt that they already imbibes cleanliness through the sleek design of their products and bright, inviting stores. Even before hearing this announcement, I thought of Apple as a “clean, bright, earth friendly company.” Clearly this is by design and I’m just happy to see some companies take steps to be environmentally conscious. Apple also announced plans for solar and wind farms in Nevada and China. Will be interesting to see if Apple disrupts the clean energy field when it applies its entrepreneurial and inventive juices to these projects.

This article describes the interesting story of Jesse Levin who went to Puerto Rico after the Hurricane Maria raked the State. I think, it draws a multifaceted picture of him, which illustrates that the boundaries between social entrepreneurs, policy entrepreneurs and so forth are, if actually there, at best vague and that the different concepts may often overlap. The article enforces, however, various points we made during discussions we had in our course this semester. It shows, for example, how important it is to get feedback from your potential customers as soon as possible. For example, the fact that Jesse, by actually being at the location of the disaster and by talking with he affected people, was able to identify not lack of food but lack of connectivity as the real issue why people were not able to buy food, illustrates well the relevance of the lean start-up approach even in the context of social entrepreneurship. It also demonstrates, as indicated by the movie “Poverty, Inc.,” that fostering local entrepreneurship might be one, if not the, most effective form of both foreign aid and disaster relief.